MY EX HID IN THE ATTIC
With two babies to care for, Amy Birch was a busy single mum, trying her best to give them a happy life.
But behind the smiling selfies with her young children is a terrifying story about the cruel domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of her ‘knight in shining armour’.
Amy’s ex-partner Aaron Chidgey, 25, has been jailed for 15 months after subjecting Amy to a creepy campaign of harassment.
Despite two court orders telling Aaron to stay away from Amy’s home, he hid in her loft for six days, secretly watching the mum of two from the attic.
She tells New Idea: “I was sickened to discover Aaron had been in my home for God knows how long and
I had no idea.
“My fear is that he will stop at nothing to hurt me. I have moved 10 times in the last year to hide from him, but he always finds me.”
Amy started a relationship with Chidgey three years ago, when she was just 17 and living on the city streets.
After a tumultuous few years as a teenage tearaway, Amy had ended up homeless.
“I was at my lowest ebb; I’d been drinking and using drugs,” Amy says.
“I just wanted someone to rescue me from myself.”
That’s when Chidgey entered her life.
It was January 11, 2017, and Amy heard someone call her name as she struggled to find somewhere safe to sleep.
“It was my second night on the streets when I bumped into Aaron,” Amy recalls.
“All I wanted I was someone to protect me and take me under their wing.”
Chidgey took Amy to the camp he and some friends shared and she
stayed that night in his tent. Amy says: “He was so kind to me and we stayed up talking all night. From then on we were a couple.”
Amy started saving up any spare money she had and contacted charities to get help. But Chidgey kept asking her for the money for drugs. “I was never addicted to drink or drugs but Aaron couldn’t go without,” she says. “He’d often send me to get him cash for drugs. The first time I said no is when he turned nasty for the first time. He hit me and slammed my head into the hard ground. I had blood all over my face and ran away to find help.
“The next day he begged for forgiveness and said he was sorry and I accepted his apology. I had nowhere else to go.”
Soon Amy had saved enough to rent the couple a private flat. But once they were behind closed doors, Aaron’s abuse escalated. “The privacy we had at home made it worse,” she recalls.
“He hung me from a cabinet once so I was struggling to breathe. He would punch holes in the walls and hit me regularly.
“I covered for him; I patched up the house. I didn’t know what else to do.”
In August, 2017, Chidgey was jailed for threatening and abusive behaviour after he pinned Amy down in the street, but the couple continued to live together once he was released.
But when Amy fell pregnant she asked Chidgey to leave.
“Once I found out I was expecting in February 2018 my whole attitude changed. I couldn’t allow myself to be hurt and dominated by this man any more. I had a baby to protect.”
Chidgey did leave – but it wasn’t for long.
“The next 18 months were a nightmare. Aaron was jailed again for assaulting me. But everywhere I went he followed,” she says.
“In the first year I moved 10 times to try to escape Aaron.”
After Chidgey was released the second time, he broke into Amy’s flat.
Amy says: “He scaled the outside of my block of flats and broke in through the balcony. I woke up with him sitting on my bed. My son was asleep in the crib next to me.”
“You can run but you can’t hide,” Chidgey said menacingly.
“He only left the flat when my mum and nan called by to take me away for the weekend.
“As soon as I was out of the building we called the police to watch the flat and stop Aaron from re-entering,” Amy says.
By this time Amy was five months pregnant to another man.
“The father was too scared of Aaron to stick around and I respected his wishes, but being a single mum to two babies was going to be hard. I knew that,” she says.
“But I felt like I could do anything as long as I was safe from Aaron.”
But when she returned from a holiday, Amy started to notice strange goings-on in the flat. Blankets and a pillow went missing. Then she spotted unwashed dishes piling up that she hadn’t used.
After six days of things moving around, she put two and two together and came up with a plan to catch Chidgey if he was hiding in her house.
“My family said I was just being paranoid. But I decided to get in a long hot shower, but when I was finished I didn’t turn off the water,” she explains.
“I thought if Aaron was in the house then he’d take that chance to move around and I was right.
“As I stepped out of the bathroom I saw Aaron’s feet disappear through the loft hatch.
“I screamed for him to get out and he jumped down and coldly turned to me and said, ‘I hope you lose that dirty baby’, before fleeing.”
Police later arrested Chidgey and he was charged with one count of breaching a restraining order and two counts of breaching a non-molestation order.
On November 8, 2019, he was jailed for 15 months.
“At the moment I feel safe because he is locked up. But I don’t want anyone else to feel the fear I live with,” she says.
“I want other women to know they are worthy of love and support.
“I am learning it for myself now, and I want to raise my two boys to always respect women and treat people with kindness.”
“IN THE FIRST YEAR I MOVED 10 TIMES TO TRY TO ESCAPE AARON”